Kira King, top commercial chancery barrister joins South Square

Coming to South Square from XXIV Old Buildings, Kira has established a commercial chancery practice with an emphasis on civil fraud, insolvency, company and commercial litigation. In addition, Kira has over ten years’ experience of both onshore and offshore contentious trusts matters, which she combines with her commercial chancery expertise.

She is an experienced advocate who frequently appears in the High Court and has experience of both trial and appellate advocacy. Kira has appeared in all levels of court, including the Supreme Court (with a leader).

Kira is particularly experienced in applications for pre-emptive and interim relief and, both as a sole advocate and led, has successfully obtained and responded to high-value freezing orders both within the jurisdiction and offshore.

She also has substantial offshore experience, having been called to Bar of the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (BVI) and the Gibraltar Bar (on an ad-hoc basis) and has been instructed on cases in the Cayman Islands, Dubai, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Jersey and the BVI.

Kira was the Chair of Junior COMBAR between 2018 – 2023 and a committee member of ConTrA (Contentious Trusts Associates) between 2016- 2023.

Her recent experience includes representing the Claimant in a multimillion pound breach of contract dispute arising out of a consultancy agreement in the energy sector in the Commercial Division  (Exporien Mining v Aggreko International Projects Limited), representing the Claimant in respect of a dispute concerning a £15 million loan facility in which she was instructed to obtain an interim prohibitory injunction against the Defendants to prevent enforcement of their security under the loan facility (Orex Consultancy Limited v WSL-Cyan Limited), representing the majority shareholder in a six-day unfair prejudice trial in respect of four companies in the Chancery Division (GO DPO EU Compliance Limited [2021] EWHC 1765 (Ch)), and being instructed with Michael Black KC (in the DIFC Court) on a claim for in excess of £100 million in respect of liability under multiple personal guarantees in respect of the trade financing liabilities of Gulf Petroleum FZC (Credit Suisse (Switzerland) Limited v Ashok Kumar Goel & Ors).

Prior to coming to the Bar, Kira trained and qualified as a solicitor at Baker & McKenzie LLP, where she gained experience in contentious trusts, international fraud and general commercial litigation. 

She subsequently worked for the offshore law firm Forbes Hare in the British Virgin Islands, where she became known for insolvency, civil fraud and distressed investment fund litigation. 

Her experience included being instructed on the restitutionary claims brought by the liquidators of Fairfield Sentry Limited, the largest of the feeder funds into Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.

Read Kira’s full CV here.